In his article ‘The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism’, Lenin delivered a counterblast to Struve:

There is no place for submissiveness in politics, and the time-honoured police method of divide et impera, divide and rule, yield the unimportant in order to preserve the essential, give with one hand and take back with the other, can be mistaken for submission only out of unbounded simplicity (both sacred and sly simplicity). (LCW, vol. 5, p. 70.)

The whole content of Lenin’s article is a devastating indictment of liberalism. From the very dawn of the Russian workers’ movement, the attitude to the bourgeois parties was always the keystone of a revolutionary approach. On this question, Lenin always displayed the most implacable intransigence. Significantly, this broadside against Struve and the liberals caused a disagreement within the Editorial Board of Iskra. Plekhanov and Axelrod were taken aback by the sharpness of the polemic.

Plekhanov wrote to the latter, expressing his misgivings:

The author’s opinion on the introduction to the memo is quite right, and there is nothing to mitigate this, even though Vera Zasulich would have liked to very much. But his tone towards the liberals and liberalism in Russia is much too malevolent. There is a great deal of justice in what he says about our liberals, but it is no good maltreating them as he does. And one more thing. It is important that you should read carefully the passage dealing with the importance of Zemstvo work. You are our most perspicacious tactician and it is for you to judge whether the author is right. I have an idea that something is wrong here. (Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB Aksel’roda, p. 270.)

Reluctantly, Lenin inserted a conciliatory paragraph at the end. Nevertheless, the general thrust of the article is quite clear: that the bourgeois liberals had amply demonstrated their cowardice and impotence, and, lacking power themselves, had to resort to pleading with the autocracy for concessions, unscrupulously utilising the threat of revolution from below; that they would inevitably sell out for the sake of a rotten compromise with the government, which would then decoy them with false promises, “only to take them by the scruff of the neck and thrash them with the whip of reaction. And when that happens, gentlemen, we will not forget to say, serves you right!” The row over Lenin’s article, with the wisdom of hindsight, was not an accident. Despite Plekhanov’s criticisms of Struve, there was a tendency among the members of the Emancipation of Labour Group which did not see the need for a radical break with that layer of bourgeois intellectuals of the Legal Marxist trend which was now clearly travelling to the right, with one foot firmly in the camp of bourgeois liberalism. Half jokingly, Lenin and Krupskaya nicknamed Zasulich and Potresov the ‘Struvefreundliche Partei’, which can be loosely translated as the ‘be-nice-to-Struve Tendency’.

Old habits die hard. If we leave aside Plekhanov, who, for all his faults, was a giant, the other members of the old group found it increasingly difficult to adapt to the new situation. In general, it takes leaders of a very special type to be able to make the necessary transition from one historical epoch, with its particular demands, to another completely different period. Not accidentally, each period of transition tends to be accompanied by crisis and splits in which a certain layer, unable to adapt to the changed conditions, falls by the wayside. The creation of a mass workers’ party is incompatible with the amateurish and informal methods which characterise the initial period of propaganda activity. The need for a more professional approach was one of the central themes of Lenin’s writings at this time. “Organising the work on a businesslike footing without introducing any personal element into it, and thus ensuring that caprice or personal relations associated with the past would not influence decisions,” wrote Krupskaya, “had now become an obvious need.” (NK Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 67.)

The tendencies of localism and amateurism, which prevailed in many committees, were holding back the work at a time when big possibilities were opening up. There could be no room for tendencies which sought to compromise, conciliate and perpetuate this mess. Iskra’s message, based on the need to fight for Marxist theory, for a unified party, for a professional approach to the work, struck a responsive chord among the workers, although by the end of 1901 there were only nine Iskra agents in the whole of Russia, and the tendency was still in a minority. Many members of local committees were sceptical or even hostile at first. Thus at the Second Congress one of the delegates remarked:

I recall the article Where to Begin? in No. 3 or 4 of Iskra. Many of the comrades active in Russia found it a tactless article; others thought this plan was fantastic, and the majority attributed it solely to ambition. Then I remember the bitterness shown towards Iskra by a majority of the committees: I remember a whole series of splits… (1903: Minutes of the Second Congress of the RSDLP, p. 181.)

The Iskra tendency was gradually built up by patient work around the paper itself. Starting as a monthly, Iskra later appeared every two weeks. Slowly but surely, a network was built up of worker-correspondents in the factories and workers’ districts, for the distribution of the paper, the systematic collection of funds, the link-up with different organisations, and the establishment of a periphery of sympathisers. A key role in this work was the steadily growing number of Iskra agents, men and women who dedicated themselves entirely to revolutionary work. Under difficult and dangerous conditions in the underground they undertook the task of building the tendency inside Russia, maintaining stable contact with the centre abroad, organising the illegal transportation of literature, establishing underground print shops, etc. Commenting on this period in which he played an active role within the Iskra camp, Trotsky gives a vivid picture of the work and lifestyle of these agents:

The immediate task of Iskra was to select from among the local workers the persons of greatest stamina and to use them in the creation of a central apparatus capable of guiding the revolutionary struggle of the entire country. The number of Iskra adherents was considerable, and it was constantly growing. But the number of genuine Iskrovites, of trusted agents of the foreign centre, was of necessity limited; it did not exceed 20 to 30 persons. Most characteristic of the Iskrovite was his severance from his own city, his own government [this appears to be a mistranslation of the Russian word gubyema meaning ‘administrative region’], his own province, for the sake of building the party. In the Iskra dictionary, ‘localism’ was a synonym for backwardness, narrowness, almost for regression. “Welded with a compact conspirative group of professional revolutionists”, wrote the Gendarme General Spiridovich, “they travelled from place to place, wherever there were party committees, established contacts with their members, delivered illegal literature to them, helped establish print shops and gathered the information needed by the Iskra. They penetrated into local committees, carried on their propaganda against Economism, eliminated their ideological opponents, and in this way subjected the committees to their influence.” The retired gendarme here gives a sufficiently correct characterisation of the Iskrovites. They were members of a wandering order, above the local organisations which they regarded as an arena for the exercise of their influence. (L. Trotsky, Stalin, p. 39.)

The first three centres for the distribution of Iskra were the Southern (Poltava), the Northern (Pskov) and the Eastern (Samara). These were later joined by the central (Moscow). The tendency was built up around the paper, according to Lenin’s theory of ‘the paper as organiser’, establishing a network of worker-correspondents in the factories, for distribution, the writing of articles, collection of funds, link-up with different organisations, and the cultivation of a local periphery of contacts. The paper was the focal point of all the work of the tendency. The period of disorganisation and chaos was reflected in a proliferation of local newspapers and leaflets. Iskra was a powerful force for unification, bringing together local committees all over Russia and providing them with a stable link with the leading centre abroad. The work began of systematically conquering the committees inside Russia for the Iskra tendency. It was work fraught with difficulties. Not only did Iskra agents have to evade the ever-vigilant state police, but they sometimes had a battle on their hands just to gain admittance to the committees.

Modern bourgeois historians falsely accuse Iskra of manoeuvring to gain control. But it was the Economists who, completely unable to defend their ideas against Marxist criticism, resorted to bureaucratic methods to silence their opponents. The Economist leader in the St. Petersburg committee, Tokarev, was so zealous in his expulsions of anyone who sympathised with Iskra that he earned the nickname of Vishibalo (the Bouncer). The upsurge of the revolutionary movement provided a fertile ground for the spread of Iskra’s ideas; in many areas, the struggle for influence within the committees led to splits. Invariably, however, the anti-Iskra committees tended to wither away and disappear, while the number of viable Iskra committees continued to grow. The success of Iskra did not escape the attention of the police. Towards the end of 1901 and early 1902, a large number of Iskra agents were arrested. But the setback did not halt the tendency’s advance.